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If you're interested in locating some music sirens, here's a basic guide.
ミュージックサイレンの設置場所を知りたい方へ、基本的なガイドをご紹介します。
Music sirens were located at schools, universities, banks, factories, department stores, municipal offices, and notable historical sites. By 1955, 50 music sirens were already in place and sounding, and there were numerous music sirens installed between 1955-1960. This means there was a significant dropoff in music siren sales starting in the 60's. At that point, there were likely already music sirens playing in a majority of towns and cities everywhere.
ミュージックサイレンは学校、大学、銀行、工場、デパート、市役所、著名な史跡などに設置されていました。1955年までに50基のミュージックサイレンが設置され稼働しており、1955年から1960年にかけても多数設置されました。これは1960年代からミュージックサイレンの販売が大幅に減少したことを意味します。この時点で、ほとんどの町や都市では既に音楽サイレンが鳴らされていたでしょう。
Your best bet for finding music sirens is to look at places you think they were installed at between 1952-1960. I'd suggest looking it up in Japanese. What do I mean by this? I found the Kobayashi music siren by typing in "小林百貨店 昭和35年". In English, that's 'Kobayashi Department Store, Showa 35'. Showa is the Japanese era, by the way, it started in 1925 and Showa 35 would be 1960. Global calendar works too if you add the Japanese Kanji for 'Year' after said year.
ミュージックサイレンを探す最善策は、1952年から1960年の間に設置されたと思われる場所を探すことだ。日本語で検索することをお勧めする。どういう意味か？私は「小林百貨店 昭和35年」と入力して小林のミュージックサイレンを見つけた。
Music sirens are sneaky, and can easily be mistaken for dozens of things. Likewise, many things can be mistaken for music sirens. Pictured on either side is the Matsuya department store in Omuta from 1983, when its music siren had just gone inactive.
ミュージックサイレンはこっそりとした存在で、何十ものものと見間違えやすい。同様に、多くのものがミュージックサイレンと間違えられることもある。左右の写真には、1983年当時、ミュージックサイレンがちょうど停止したばかりの大牟田・松屋デパートが写っている。
Can you see it on the left? Perhaps if I highlight it on the right?
左側に見えますか？右側で強調してみたらどうでしょう？
Isn't it strange how you know where it is in hindsight, but without someone taking up-close photos of it, you may have never found it?
後から振り返れば場所が分かるのに、誰かが間近で写真を撮っていなければ、決して見つけられなかったかもしれないなんて、不思議だと思いませんか？
Now that you know how to find photos of music sirens, you can start identifying them!
On the off chance you do find an image of a music siren, your best bet is to post it to the ARS article or twitter. If you use twitter, please @ me @musicsirenrt, and I will try to dig into the location further.
You can find a music siren's approximate era of install using a method I like to use:
Using the gearbox on most music sirens, we can identify the approximate era the music siren was installed during by its design. Take a look at the gearbox on the Okayama Prefectural Government Office's music siren, highlighted in red. Note its design, and how it's angled. This was typical with music sirens installed before 1959.
You can also see this design with the Taiyo Kumamoto and Marumitsu music siren.
Now take a look at the design with Omuta Matsuya's music siren. It's much simpler, as it's... well, it's just a box. This is the modern style you'll occasionally see, and this is how we also know that TOKIWA's music siren was indeed a replacement for their older unit.
You might also notice some music sirens' dampers are missing ports on the top, it's unknown why this is. I'd say don't worry about it. It probably relates to air pressure and siren pitch, and it's been there since the beginning on about half the models. (You can actually see this with the E and F2 dampers on Iga's music siren.)
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